John Titor Archive: Interview with a time traveler (page 1 of 19)

Well if you look closer, you?ll realize Titor NEVER said he has personal income taxes. You can misconstrue what he said, but actually he said:

Sounds like you don't enjoy keeping track of your
personal income taxes.

and in regards to taxes being paid, he only said,

Yes, we pay taxes.

But he never said WHAT KIND. Sales, property, etc. He certainly didn?t say "Yes, we pay income taxes." You have be real careful in reading what he said. Sure, it looks like he meant personal income taxes, if you read the sentence a certain way and get all hyped up to debunk him. But a second, closer, look always reveals a strange consistency.

Is there an IRS and a need to keep a lot of receipts and paperwork?


Yes, we pay taxes. I had considered going into more detail about the tax
system but I didn't have a great deal of time. Currently, I am watching my
father go over all his taxes and he doesn't look like he's having a very

I don't know what other kind of taxes he would be referring to...not to mention his conflicting ideas of the society of his time, he talks about communist/socialist practices, but also elements of capitalism...maybe he is confused, but I think he would know all these things very well.

[edit on 26-6-2004 by Shoktek]

Perhaps his father is filling out state taxes for his business. Maybe only business have taxes (which makes sense in a way). Or maybe it's some kind of tax for specific items or usage, not income. It's the future. No one can say for sure.

Find me a contradiction where he clearly says one thing and then clearly says another. There is one () but it's really minor. I won't tell you though.

After the war, my father made a living selling oranges up and down the West coast of Florida.

My father made a living by putting together
12-volt electrical systems and sailing "commodities" up and down the coast
of Florida.

Now I suppose you will say that oranges were the "commodities" and he just left out the electrical systems earlier...but similar things, as with the tax system, just look as if he is making it up. He seems to leave details out one place, then make up new ones somewhere else.

Laser Picture was Faked

If you really read through what this guy says with an open mind, and not the mind of wanting to believe everything he says...you will see the inconsistencies in the way he describes his life in the future, and their society, monetary system, and different theories he uses to explain his time travelling...go ahead and believe it if you want, or just accept the fact that it was a very good hoax.

[edit on 26-6-2004 by Shoktek]

John Titor says: I think "UFOs" might be time travelers with very sophisticated distortion units. But that might be a bit wacky.

He thinks the possibty of UFOs being time travelers are " a bit wacky", but he is a time traveler though, so how can that be wacky

I am here for personal reasons. For a few months now, I have bee trying to alert anyone that would listen to the possibility of a civil war in the United States in 2005.

The possibility?? he said that it will begin in 2005. Now he said there is a possibility of it happening. I have always heard that he said it was 2004 to begin with

Among all the issues with the Titor material, the laser picture alone is enough to prove his claims to be a hoax.

I definitely read him say where he could never get back to his "exact worldline" but he could get close to it.

Actually I think you both are correct. In one instance he says that his computer can map it and he can get back with no problem and the next instance he claims that he can return to a reality that is virtually the same with only minor differences. I think he has been debunked.

After the war, my father made a living selling oranges up and down the West coast of Florida.

My father made a living by putting together
12-volt electrical systems and sailing "commodities" up and down the coast
of Florida.

Could you please provide the reference numbers for these statements? I will examine them and draw a conclusion.

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
Among all the issues with the Titor material, the laser picture alone is enough to prove his claims to be a hoax.

Do you care to clarify this? There are red lasers, visible through blowing cigerrette smoke, and the gravity feild had a specific range (in theory) which bent the laser (and other light).

again, so far as the social contradictions go...

Do we live in a socialist or capitalist economy? Do we have a free market or a planned economy? Well, most of us would probably describe the US as being a capitalistic, de-centralized, free market land... however people might say that any one of us was making contradictions if we described the US in such a way and then went on to mention things like welfare, the Federal Reserve Board, the Social Security System and a myriad of other things.

The fact is that we live in a 'mixed' economy, and though we might have free market tendencies/ideology, we also incorporate a variety of socialist ideas into our system. In the same vein, JT's world might have a mixed system, only one that considers itself roughly libertarian.

The fact that his society has collectivization AND an emphasis on individuality might indicate that it's really just concerned with pragmatic solutions and is NOT interested in ideological clarity. Also... has anyone considered that JT might be inconsistent without even knowing it? His is depicted as a militarized, impoverished world... one where high education is almost nonexistant. It might be possible for him to have conflicting opinions because he lacks the rhetorical training to take note of that (or, like a modern day NKorean soldier, he just doesn't realize his own system's errors).

Again, I'm not saying that I believe JT, just that many of these debunkings based on 'inconsistencies' fail to take into account how someone with a limited education would describe a complex world in a few sentences or less. My bet is that any one of us, if they were answering questions for someone from 1970, would say 'inconsistent' things as well.

Originally posted by ktprktpr
Do you care to clarify this? There are red lasers, visible through blowing cigerrette smoke, and the gravity feild had a specific range (in theory) which bent the laser (and other light).

Read the link about the laser...you can see in the picture that the "laser" isn't even coming out of the laser pointer at a straight angle. Also, the smoke wouldn't be enough to see the entire beam as you can in the photo. If the gravity distortion bent the laser, it would also bend other light in the photo, which it does not.

I got the two statements about his father from johntitor.com in the section "John's World". When I first heard about John Titor a while back, I actually read through almost all of his posts, and from that concluded it was a hoax...many sites archive only certain things in the hopes that people will only see one side of it. You really need to read the original posts.

"As can be seen from this photo, the chrononaut calling himself Jonathon Titorton is a purveyor of fraud. He claims that this is a photo of a man floating about space in 1966, yet it is well known that any human in a weightless environment would find themselves vomiting their intestines out while their eyeballs shot from their sockets. Also, it's clearly impossible for so-called 'rockets' to operate in space, as they would have no medium to react against... the lunatic theories of Dr. Goddard aside:




-Above Secrecy Telegraph System, June 26, 1904"






My point... it's somewhat foolish to use our knowledge of science to debunk time machine stories... because our knowledge might be wrong. A century ago it was considered a FACT that rockets could not work in space and that weightlessness would result in a cruel death. A man showing oictures of Gemini astronauts spacewalking would be debunked for his lack of scientific accuracy.

In the same sense, we don't know if the instructor in the picture 'vectored' the gravity distortion a certain way, or if light has some sort of elasticity (yes, I know that's a fantastic stretch...).

In the end, we can only judge JT based on his predictions. When I look around, I see developing mad cow problems... a rapidly polarizing country...

I don't know...

"Read the link about the laser...you can see in the picture that the "laser" isn't even coming out of the laser pointer at a straight angle."

That's because its supposed to be near a gravity well.

"Also, the smoke wouldn't be enough to see the entire beam as you can in the photo."

And you know how much smoke is coming out of that ciger? Can someone smoke for an hour, normally, before being asked to demostrate something for a photo?

"If the gravity distortion bent the laser, it would also bend other light in the photo, which it does not."

Remember, A) the machine has a range of effect (which can be controlled) and B) if I bend pervasive colorless light, will you see it? No.

I got the two statements about his father from johntitor.com in the section "John's World".

If you can not cite your sources then I can not form a conclusion about what you said. The JT catalog on ATS is a definitive source of everything JT said, undedited and un-altered (except for classification, which can be ignored). I suggest, in the future, that you cite from there.

johntitor.com has been around for much longer and is accurate, and easier to sort through when looking for specific topics. I don't know why you insist on defending this hoax, the picture has been debunked, the guy also changes his story around a lot if you read the posts. Why you insist on believing these lies in beyond me, but go ahead.

Again, I don't 'believe' him.... but I have to point out that all the debunking here isn't as solid as you guys think it is. You assume that the world of the future is somehow clear cut and molded along ideologically uniform lines, that everything in history has clear start and end dates, that people in 30 years will see current events exactly the same way we do (and prioritize them the same way) and that our knowledge of physics is complete and whole.

Originally posted by onlyinmydreams
You assume that the world of the future is somehow clear cut and molded along ideologically uniform lines, that everything in history has clear start and end dates, that people in 30 years will see current events exactly the same way we do (and prioritize them the same way) and that our knowledge of physics is complete and whole.

Yes, this is true, but some of the things he has said really are questionable...things like the taxes, the way their community runs, and what his father did after the war. I don't know why certain answers to such simple questions would be so vague. The story seems to change around a lot if you read his actual posts...

Also, about the laser...if this gravitational "vortex" is supposed to bend all light in its "range", then please tell me how one could take a photograph of this...remember how cameras work from light, wouldn't everything in the picture be distorted, and not just the beam?

[edit on 26-6-2004 by Shoktek]

Ok here's my take after a small bout of research into the time travel aspect and debunk aspect here.

Debunked? No, the laser picture does seem coherent with what he is saying. Although far fetched if a miniature singularity was indeed "pulling" the light the beam potentially would be off center from the get go. As for the way he was sitting in the car he could have been sitting on one leg with the other one propped up or bent under its self. As far as distortions in the photo, did you see it? it was fairly distorted.

The actual physics of what he is saying is coherent. In fact right now they are building a new proton smasher and one of the main purposes of it is to find gravitons to quantify part of the string theory (the M-theory actually but at the time John wrote that finding singularities by way of particle smashers was not a seriously considered theory.) by proving their existence. If they do indeed find gravitons than making a mini singularity (black hole) isn't far behind. I think the facts here maybe some sort of prophecy, very intuitive conjecture, or his story may be true. In any event the truths that may be in this are as profound as they are questionable and only time will sort it out.

Um....all of you guys are crazy for believing this stuff.

The John Titor story is one of the best examples of using the Internet to tell a great sci-fi story. Obviously it's fake but what a fantastic fake! It's almost soap-opera, part interactive story. Almost like those adventure story books we all played with as kids. "Select page x to turn to left, page Y to turn right, page Z to slay beast.", the forum attendees controlled the direction of John Titor story, not the other way around.

Great to see the story has been archived.

reply to post by Shoktek


In the first thread he states "there are no income taxes". In the second thread he states, "we pay taxes. It seems you don't like keeping track of personal income taxes."

This is not a contradiction. He does not state that they pay personal income taxes in the second thread. He first states that they pay taxes. He then states that he believes that the person he's responding to doesn't like to pay income taxes. This doesn't mean that they pay income taxes in the future, just that he can understand how people don't like to pay income taxes, but that they don't get out of paying any taxes at all in the future.

This is only a logical interpretation, IF he was not contradicting himself. It's not to say that he's not contradicting himself, only that there is an interpretation of these statements where it is not required that he is contradicitng himself.

Jaden